Chapter 25

CHAPTER XXV

While this sufficiently intimate colloquy (prolonged for some
time after we cease to follow it) went forward Madame Merle and
her companion, breaking a silence of some duration, had begun to
exchange remarks. They were sitting in an attitude of unexpressed
expectancy; an attitude especially marked on the part of the
Countess Gemini, who, being of a more nervous temperament than
her friend, practised with less success the art of disguising
impatience. What these ladies were waiting for would not have
been apparent and was perhaps not very definite to their own
minds. Madame Merle waited for Osmond to release their young
friend from her tete-a-tete, and the Countess waited because
Madame Merle did. The Countess, moreover, by waiting, found the
time ripe for one of her pretty perversities. She might have
desired for some minutes to place it. Her brother wandered with
Isabel to the end of the garden, to which point her eyes followed
them.

"My dear," she then observed to her companion, "you'll excuse me
if I don't congratulate you!"

"Very willingly, for I don't in the least know why you should."

"Haven't you a little plan that you think rather well of?" And
the Countess nodded at the sequestered couple.

Madame Merle's eyes took the same direction; then she looked
serenely at her neighbour. "You know I never understand you very
well," she smiled.

"No one can understand better than you when you wish. I see that
just now you DON'T wish."

"You say things to me that no one else does," said Madame Merle
gravely, yet without bitterness.

"You mean things you don't like? Doesn't Osmond sometimes say
such things?"

"What your brother says has a point."

"Yes, a poisoned one sometimes. If you mean that I'm not so
clever as he you mustn't think I shall suffer from your sense of
our difference. But it will be much better that you should
understand me."

"Why so?" asked Madame Merle. "To what will it conduce?"

"If I don't approve of your plan you ought to know it in order to
appreciate the danger of my interfering with it."

Madame Merle looked as if she were ready to admit that there
might be something in this; but in a moment she said quietly:
"You think me more calculating than I am."

"It's not your calculating I think ill of; it's your calculating
wrong. You've done so in this case."

"You must have made extensive calculations yourself to discover
that."

"No, I've not had time. I've seen the girl but this once," said
the Countess, "and the conviction has suddenly come to me. I like
her very much."

"So do I," Madame Merle mentioned.

"You've a strange way of showing it."